photo courtesy of dbking

there is a great article in access atlanta today about the couple that bought and saved the plaza theater:

“It hit us: It’d be cool to try to keep that place open,” Jonathan said. “So we called and said, ‘How much you want for that place?’ I don’t know why. We just did it.”

They met with a broker, looked at the books, stopped by a bank.

Jonathan: “Finally we said, ‘Wow. I guess we can actually do this.'”

The joking stopped. Asking price for eveything but the leased building: $100,000

“I totally remember sitting at the dining room table going, ‘You want to do it? Are you sure we can do this? Maybe we shouldn’t do this,’ ” Gayle recalled.

Jonathan’s tie breaker: “It came down to, ‘I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. Let’s just do it.'”

So like a hipster remake of an old MGM musical, the Rejs did it. Almost two years later, they remain unlikely saviors of Atlanta’s oldest continuously operating movie house. For how much longer remains an open question.

the article goes on to discuss how the bread and butter of the plaza hasn’t been indie films like the owners thought, but rather special events like slasher flicks, grease sing-alongs and art shows in combination with films.

a quick check of the plaza’s web site shows some pretty neat stuff coming up including sideshow art combined with the movie killer klowns from outer space. who could beat that?

h/t to the atlmalcontent who says in his post, “the least cinephiles can do is help them break even by supporting the Plaza, real grass compared to the AstroTurf sameness of the multiplex.”

indeed.